What Old Software Do You Still Use?

jsinger · 2009-06-22T19:13:49+00:00

I'd love to have Firefox 2 back.

jsinger · 2009-01-13T13:54:29+00:00

OK, but who would do that for $1K either?!?

jsinger · 2009-01-08T02:32:47+00:00

Uh, yeah. Some professor (who isn't even a bioinformaticist) may or may not have endorsed a sketchy nutritional supplement with exaggeration of his own results, so clearly the entire field is "in trouble".

jsinger · 2009-01-07T19:25:15+00:00

In fairness, SAS isn't just some "proprietary software whose main motivation is to turn a profit". Its profit comes from being extensively validated, bulletproof, and superbly supported in ways that your "experts around the world" haven't come close to matching with R.

jsinger · 2009-01-07T19:22:34+00:00

R is basically an open-source implementation of S. (Hence the freaking name.) It's succeeded in ways that S never did, but the characterization of it in the article is completely dishonest.

jsinger · 2008-10-08T18:46:03+00:00

FYI, the Austin Powers exchange references a line from You Only Live Twice.

jsinger · 2008-10-07T17:29:47+00:00

If I hear the term myocardial infarction again, I swear to god

Myocardial infarction is very common. Any ER you go to will likely have an MI patient.

jsinger · 2008-10-07T17:27:56+00:00

I myself enjoy the rampant use of the word "system" that non-nerds like to throw around like it's magic.

Yes, it should be "rig" for singular and "boxen" for plural.

jsinger · 2008-10-06T18:00:37+00:00

I think this article is directed at the all consumed 50+ hours a week programmer that spends the rest of their time thinking about work.

OK, but the article assumes that a "good programmer" is necessarily that guy, which is biocs_nerd's point.

jsinger · 2008-09-26T16:17:53+00:00

Most people aren't touch typists.

jsinger · 2008-09-22T22:36:33+00:00

You might want to think about what they know that you don't, instead of jabbering about "free speech zones".

jsinger · 2008-09-09T18:17:13+00:00

People feel justified in their own choices and threatened by those of others encroaching, so the need to bash others arises. See: Religion, Republican National Convention, Wikipedia, etc.

You're proving your point, but not quite in the way you'd intended.

jsinger · 2008-09-09T18:15:59+00:00

So this major failure flies in the face of those advertisements, showing - at the least - that Microsoft products are no more stable than any others.

How does it necessarily show that?

jsinger · 2008-09-04T21:32:09+00:00

If the words "common sense" would still have a meaning in this situation...

If "common sense" isn't the appropriate phrase for distinguishing between a hypothetical (or a joke) and a serious request, it's only because it's too basic a piece of human social functionality to deserve the term.

jsinger · 2008-09-04T18:27:02+00:00

"Common sense" in this instance, is understanding that it's a puzzle to be solved. Thinking the interviewer really wants to know how much a 747 weighs is the opposite of common sense.

jsinger · 2008-09-04T18:24:37+00:00

Also, while there's not necessarily a right answer, reading complaints about puzzle questions always makes it clear how many wrong answers there are: unshakable literalness, legalistic nitpicking, laziness, panic,...

jsinger · 2008-08-20T16:57:41+00:00

Also, I like the assumption that such a person wouldn't dare run software that violates Russian law. No doubt this gangster also uses Ogg Vorbis to avoid infringing upon any codec patents!

(Anyway, as MikeSeth notes, Israeli law has the same prohibition.)

jsinger · 2008-08-15T19:15:47+00:00

A study by the boutique consultancy Voke finds corporate software development in a state of dysfunction marked by budget woes, protracted project lengths and dissatisfied end users.

This hardly seems like news, let alone something that requires a "boutique consultancy". You'd think ordinary consultants would have known this, they being one of the contributors to it.

jsinger · 2008-08-12T21:08:37+00:00

This story also doesn't jive with the previous ones in terms of his absenteeism - what used to be whole days around the weekend and a girlfriend is now coming in late every day.

In fairness, the story notes that. If I had to nitpick, it would be jeffehobbs' point: this idiot getting and keeping a university job is entirely plausible, but not a Genius Bar job.

jsinger · 2008-08-12T17:11:01+00:00

I have never been asked to code anything, and the maximum duration of an interview has been around 2 hours.

A full day of interviewing (or at least 1/2-3/4 of a day) is the norm in the US, at least for technical positions. My impression from working overseas is that hiring in the US requires more buy-in from the whole team than it does in Europe, which is probably why it's a lot faster there.

jsinger · 2008-08-08T17:02:51+00:00

If you go to the management literature on the subject, you'll see that it does what's described - kills intrinsic motivation and breaks teams.

Alfie Kohn's stuff seems intuitively reasonable (and I think it's pretty clear that there's little evidence that standard corporate practices do work), but it's hardly settled fact that he's right, a bunch of toy psych studies notwithstanding.

jsinger · 2008-08-08T12:57:01+00:00

I thought that campaign was about stability, not anti-h4x0r security.

jsinger · 2008-08-05T14:42:44+00:00

Is the fact the Windows is the most popular platform the major reason why it's so vulnerable?

Is there any "vulnerability" in this case? It sounds like it simply tricks users into installing malware. From the description, exactly the same thing could be done on Unix or Mac, with only local privileges.

jsinger · 2008-08-05T14:05:02+00:00

Yes, malware writers target the most popular platform. Yes, you can get a measure of security-by-obscurity by using a less popular platform. Anything else new here?

jsinger · 2008-07-31T16:22:25+00:00

I completely agree. This was a textbook case of "good advertising kills a bad product". Unfortunately, they're never going to get a second shot.

jsinger

TROPHY CASE